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I do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category

I do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category. Calling them collectively "evolution" is not a subtle mistake to make. In fact placing together memetics and genetics in a single sentence doesn't even compile for me. It's like stamp-collecting and murder. Yes, my whole point is that we are operating on memetic engine and it works wonders. I'll point out one thing "that just edits our patterns out of the population as it always has", just like not eating or not having sex: being infected by tuberculosis bacteria. By your reasoning developing a vaccine is just silly. Do we even want to rescue any Chopins or Orwells or Kafkas. Vaccine (which is effectively a meme) "just changes evolutionary pressures rather than eliminating them". If it happens, good, if it doesn't happen, no worries? That's the message? Iguanas surely don't give a fuck about their Chopins.

Volundr 6y ago
> I do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category. Calling them collectively "evolution" is not a subtle mistake to make. But they absolutely are the same category. 100%, and always have been. Just look at how mating preference has affected many species, ex: the peacock. "Cultural" pressure preferred men with a colorful booty, and over time genetics conformed. The same is true if the "culture" prefers people who are soft spoken, adversarial, drawn to the color green, or have a funny left ear. If the culture means that people with a certain trait are more successful and thus more likely to reproduce over a sufficient period of time genetics will trend towards producing more individuals like that. As for the rest of your comment, I keep reading it over and over and I can't figure out what your getting at. Developing a vaccine means more people in my group are likely to survive to reproduce, thus (given sufficient time) evolution will favor those species that can produce vaccines (or not be vulnerable to the disease in the first place).
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  This is called "Baldwinian evolution" [0] after the biologist James Baldwin. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  Let's swap the vaccine example with something more showy. You seem to be saying that Crocs users have a serious chance to die out in one or two thousand years (after all 30 or 60 generations are peanuts). I'm sure the effect is real. I'm not holding my breath though, because seemingly humans posses another mechanism which can mysteriously mask the trait of i-like-ugly-shoes within just one or two generations. (And with almost no one dying out?) Just like it didn't take 30-60 generations for the trait of i-hate-suspicious-injections to die out. I avoided the word "evolution" in hope of achieving understanding at least about the territory if not about the map.

Volundr 6y ago

> I do care whether I'm subjected to cultural pressures or to genetic pressures and I would rather not muddle my worldview by conflating them to a single category. Calling them collectively "evolution" is not a subtle mistake to make. But they absolutely are the same category. 100%, and always have been. Just look at how mating preference has affected many species, ex: the peacock. "Cultural" pressure preferred men with a colorful booty, and over time genetics conformed. The same is true if the "culture" prefers people who are soft spoken, adversarial, drawn to the color green, or have a funny left ear. If the culture means that people with a certain trait are more successful and thus more likely to reproduce over a sufficient period of time genetics will trend towards producing more individuals like that. As for the rest of your comment, I keep reading it over and over and I can't figure out what your getting at. Developing a vaccine means more people in my group are likely to survive to reproduce, thus (given sufficient time) evolution will favor those species that can produce vaccines (or not be vulnerable to the disease in the first place).

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
This is called "Baldwinian evolution" [0] after the biologist James Baldwin. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mark_Baldwin
kubanczyk 6y ago
Let's swap the vaccine example with something more showy. You seem to be saying that Crocs users have a serious chance to die out in one or two thousand years (after all 30 or 60 generations are peanuts). I'm sure the effect is real. I'm not holding my breath though, because seemingly humans posses another mechanism which can mysteriously mask the trait of i-like-ugly-shoes within just one or two generations. (And with almost no one dying out?) Just like it didn't take 30-60 generations for the trait of i-hate-suspicious-injections to die out. I avoided the word "evolution" in hope of achieving understanding at least about the territory if not about the map.